RE: Is indenting subheadings and subtext current practice? Is it useful?

["Brierley, Sean" <Sean -at- Quodata -dot- Com>]

Hallo:

I've not seen your books, but what you do sounds fine. You obviously run
into more paragraph styles and, if you use other tools, such as WebWorks
Publisher or such, you will have to map and reference a larger set of
styles.

For 500-page software manuals, I try limit myself to 4 levels of headings.
None are indented, I only modify font style and size. I could indent, but
don't think I need to and I like to keep the number of styles I use to a
minimum. As an aside, in stepped procedures, I only have two levels of
numbered lists (1. and a.), each indented from body text and the second
level indented from the first, and three levels of bullets . . . the third
set to be used under the second level of numbers <g>.

The only other concern I would have about indenting four times for four
heading levels is column width: how wide is that final text column?

Best regards,

Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jennifer Laiks [SMTP:jlaiks -at- prioritycall -dot- com]
> 
> Currently, our larger user manuals have five levels of headers, and along 
> with them five levels of text, bullets, and lists.  Each sub-level is 
> indented more than the level above it.  Of course, indentation at five 
> levels forces us to use a great number of paragraph types (in FrameMaker).
> 
> We were wondering if most people indent different levels of text?  Is it 
> more current to just use different sizes of headers?  Has anyone seen 
> articles/statistics on what degree of indentation makes text clearer for 
> readers?
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> Jennifer